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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


GHAZALS: 21 by JAMES HARRISON

Poet Analysis

First Line: HE SINGS FROM THE BOTTOM OF A WELL BUT SHE CAN HEAR HIM UP
Last Line: DRAGS THE DEAD HORSE AWAY TO HOLLOW SWELLING GROWLS.
Subject(s): ANIMALS; DEATH; IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS; SINGING & SINGERS; DEAD, THE; SONGS;

He sings from the bottom of a well but she can hear him up
through the oat straw, toads, boards, three entwined snakes.

It quiets the cattle they say mythically as who alive has
tried it, their blank stares, cows digesting song. Rumen.

Her long hissing glides at the roller-skating rink, skates
to calves to thighs to ass in blue satin and organ music.

How could you be sane if 250,000 came to the Isle of Wight
to hear your songs near the sea and they looked like an ocean?

Darling companion. We'll listen until it threatens and walls
fall to trumpet sounds or not and this true drug lifts us up.

That noise that came to us out in the dark, grizzly, leviathan,
drags the dead horse away to hollow swelling growls.



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